Samuel Johnson

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life … would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.

Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

All personal achievement starts in the mind of the individual. Your personal achievement starts in your mind. The first step is to know exactly what your problem, goal or desire is.

Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself.

The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born -a hundred million years -and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together. There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.